Reviews for Wave

Booklist Reviews 2005 October #2Mosley's wandered off turf again, writing imitation Dean Koontz and calling it science fiction. Out-of-work programmer Errol Porter lives in his former garage since his wife ditched him and the house was sold. For work he maintains a pottery shop, where he has struck up a relationship with artist Nella, which is good because it gives him someone to tell about the weird phone calls he's been getting from a guy who sounds like his nine-years-dead father. He discovers it is his dad, but he's only 20 and says that he really just embodies Errol's father's memories and is actually part of the "wave" that a meteor brought to earth one and a half billion years ago. "Goofy," Errol thinks, until he is hauled away by a secret army operation that already knows about the wave because of other reanimated dead people. The army's bent on destroying the revenants and every other manifestation of the wave, including Errol if they find he has been "infected." Errol escapes and joins the wave people in fleeing and trying to hide their life source. In the process, Errol boffs several other women, gets buff, and writes this first-person account. The (mercifully undetailed) sex seems gratuitous, the wave business feels mushy, Errol's captivity and escape are like scenes from a dull-witted fifties "sci-fi" flick, and the characters aren't even strong cardboard. For Mosley completists only. ((Reviewed October 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews.

----------------------Kirkus Reviews 2005 October #2The apparent resurrection of his dead father is only the beginning of an unemployed system administrator's fantastic confrontation with forces that could change the destiny of the planet.It begins with a series of crank calls from someone claiming to be Errol Porter's father, dead and buried since 1996. What's unnerving is that although the caller sounds increasingly like Arthur Bontemps Porter III and seems to know things only Errol's dad could know, he looks, when Errol meets him face to face, like a much younger man. Errol wonders just what this unearthly visitation foretells. Is the man Errol dubs "Good Times," or "GT," a ghost, a reincarnation or a fake? None of the above, says Dr. David Wheeler, a physician who's become a high-ranking officer in the U.S. Army. Under the auspices of Homeland Security, Wheeler pulls Errol in and imprisons him in his own home, where his wife uses Errol for sex as Wheeler looks for ways to deal with what he's convinced is a massive invasion of parasitic "demons from hell" who assume human form with the aim of colonizing the earth and reducing humans to helpless hosts. Whom can Errol trust, the federal government or an impossible version of his father? As the stakes continue to rise, the carefully controlled emotional conflicts Mosley (Cinnamon Kiss, 2005, etc.) has woven begin to scatter like fragments of an exploding star.Even so, Mosley's third foray into sci-fi (Futureland, 2001, etc.) is as provocative and deeply felt as ever, right down to the enigmatic ending.Agent: Gloria Loomis/Watkins Loomis Agency Inc. Copyright Kirkus 2005 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.

----------------------Library Journal Reviews 2005 November #1

Mosley made a big splash with his first sf endeavor, Blue Light ; now he hopes to make an even bigger splash with The Wave . That's what Erroll encounters when he receives a call from his father, dead for years, and rushes to his grave to see what's happening.

[Page 89]. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

----------------------Library Journal Reviews 2006 January #1

Established writer Mosley's (after Futureland ) new sf novel opens with programmer-turned-potter Errol "Airy" Porter receiving a strange phone call from the cemetery where his father is buried. When he visits the cemetery, he meets his reincarnated father--or someone very much like him. Set in the Los Angeles area and told from the black protagonist's point of view, this book evokes the Easy Rawlins mystery novels (e.g., Devil in a Blue Dress ), though the era is the gritty present. The titular "wave" refers to a colony that formed millions of years ago, when simple cells were driven into the Earth's core by a comet. As Porter's--and the colony's--adventures unfold, Mosley explores some of the themes of human purpose and limitations that run through Blue Light , another one of his adult sf works. The sf aspect of this novel is less well developed than the contemporary setting and the frightening and illuminating situations into which Porter is thrown. However, the taut story will hold readers' interest and is recommended for public and academic libraries.--Sara Tompson, Univ. of Southern California Lib., Los Angeles

[Page 105]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

----------------------Publishers Weekly Reviews 2005 November #1

Bestseller Mosley's latest foray into allegorical SF is reminiscent of his 1998 novel, Blue Light , but it isn't nearly as rich and captivating. How should the book's hero, Errol, react when his late, beloved father reappears as a younger, ecstatic, incomplete version of the father's former self? How should the government respond when nearly invincible reanimated bodies claiming to be portions of a primordial life-form appear in our midst, out of an immense wave? And how can that life-form, which strives only for harmony, connect with us if it can't make itself understood to the fanatical military doctor, who takes Errol and his father prisoner, and is developing a poison to exterminate the peaceful newly arisen dead lest they overwhelm the human population? Mosley fails to sustain the deep, meaningful tone that would have brought this pensive tale to life. Even various sexual encounters and communions with the vast universe lack passion. This wave is fast and small, but it leaves little behind in its wake. (Jan.)